People strolling along the Seine near Pont Neuf next week may be startled by the sounds of drumming and the scents of cooking drifting from the Paris Mint.
In a courtyard of the Mint, a grand 18th-century building known as the Monnaie de Paris, women will chant Sufi verses in a rain dance as a drummer beats a tempo and another artist draws a giant fiery landscape. Nearby, cooks will dish out cuisine and conversation.
It is all part of Asia Now, an annual art fair dedicated to contemporary art made by artists from Asia and the Asian diaspora.
Each year, the fair selects a theme or country of focus, inviting exhibitors to curate their booths around it. This year, to mark its 10th edition, which runs Oct. 18-20, the fair designated the theme “ceremony.”
“We wanted this edition to be participative, immersive, spiritual, and show the diversity of Asia through its ceremonial traditions,” said Alexandra Fain, co-founder of the fair, in a phone interview from Paris.
“On this anniversary, we are pleased to echo a new multicentered reality, which is that new centers of art are emerging and coexisting,” Fain said, adding, “ours is a ‘global Asia,’ which is not just a geographical region, but a way of thinking and a spirit.”
Featuring some 70 exhibitors from 21 countries, including 10 first-time participants, the fair will showcase both established artists and emerging art projects. The team behind the fair, including Fain, the French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud and the curatorial cooperative Radicants, aimed to create something of a village-like ambience by staging performances in the building’s courtyards and having textiles draped on the walls and ceramics on the ground.
“The performances change daily,” Fain noted, adding that each day, “there is something new to discover.”
“I have always wanted this fair to be more than just commercial, but a place of discovery and learning,” she added in a follow-up interview.
Sumayya Vally, a South African architect of Indian descent — in collaboration with the new Sufi Museum (Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO), based just outside Paris — is showing a meditative rainmaking dance titled “L’Eau dans Une Main et Le Feu dans Une Autre” (“Water in One Hand and Fire in The Other”), where women move among clay pots and use water to dissolve unfired clay vessels back into mud.
Galleria Continua, which has headquarters in San Gimignano, Italy, is presenting “Fire x Fire,” a collaborative work in which the French artist Uriel Barthélémi plays drums, accompanying a live drawing session by the Indian artist Nikhil Chopra, exploring fire’s sacred, industrial, spiritual and political dimensions.
Britto Arts Trust, an artist-run collective from Dhaka, Bangladesh, will present “Pakghor — The Social Kitchen,” a working kitchen-cum-living room under bamboo canopies in the tradition of Bangladesh. Visitors will be invited to sample food prepared by the artists and talk about food politics.
The collective said in an email that its members examine “food politics as a global language,” thinking through the connections among famine, migration and displacement: “We intend to make traditional food throughout the fair for those who are interested in food and conversation.”
Mirna Bamieh, represented by Nika Project Space from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, will also explore the culture of food. Bamieh, who grew up in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, has relocated to Lisbon in the past year.
Her site-specific show, derived from a series called “Sour Things: The Kitchen,” consists of paintings, videos, wallpaper, a soundscape, and various objects made from ceramic, porcelain, and glass through which she examines practices of food preservation, like fermentation and sun-drying, as a metaphor for self-preservation.
“I create what the pantry of displaced and uprooted people might look like,” Bamieh said in a phone interview from Lisbon. “How do you fill food jars when you have no control over anything.”
Her “Sour Cords” pieces — made from porcelain and suspended from the ceiling — show “traces of trauma like they survived a dark event,” she said. “There is emotion in their glazing.”
Sabrina Amrani gallery from Madrid, a first-time exhibitor, is showing miniature works by two Pakistani artists: intricate landscape paintings by Wardha Shabbir and large scale, minimalist drawings resembling webs by Waqas Khan.
Also new to the fair is the Berlin-based gallery Carlier Gebauer, with sculptures by the Filipino American artist Paul Pfeiffer, whose work explores the language of mass media spectacle, often spectator sports.
Perrotin, a gallery founded in Paris that now has locations worldwide, is showcasing works by the Hong Kong-born artist Chang Ya Chin.
The Belgium-based Felix Frachon Gallery is presenting “The Brides of Mokhber al-Dowleh,” a photography series by the Iranian artist Tahmineh Monzavi, which captures bridal dresses displayed in shop windows of dilapidated buildings.
“The bridal gowns were shot in an old neighborhood of Tehran,” Monzavi said in a phone interview from Tehran. “The shops are run-down, and the crumbling buildings carry the weight of history. I have always thought the rituals around lavish weddings in Iran were exaggerated, and here, I show a different side of these dresses. They are like wandering ghosts, hauntingly beautiful amidst the ruins.”
The Paris-based gallery Backslash is presenting a solo show of the Mongolian-born artist Odonchimeg Davaadorj.
“Nature is at the center of the stories I tell in my work, especially in my drawings, because nature is what connects us to all other living things,” Davaadorj wrote in an email.
Many of the artist’s works are dominated by a specific shade of red, symbolizing blood as her connection to living beings. The connection is further emphasized through the selection of her red-themed drawings, paintings and ceramics.
“Asia Now is unique in that it highlights art from a region that is often overlooked in big commercial art fairs,” Jérôme Sans, an independent curator who served as the artistic director for the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, said in a phone interview from Paris.
“This fair is not trying to be a comprehensive showcase of contemporary Asian art,” Sans said. “But what makes it special is how it mirrors the buzz of Asia’s streets, where art, food and culture all blend together to create a very human, authentic experience that reflects the heartbeat of Asia.”
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